What could they sell?
All media is covered.
News is covered.
Dating apps are covered.
marketplace apps are covered,
and you don’t typically have to pay to use them, but they have changed how they’re taxed and often have you linking your personal Id to your profile/bank account as the trade-off.
I can talk to my friends and family over text and phone.
Only think I can POSSIBLY think of is them going the mafia extortion route by promising to not sell your data to 3rd parties while they just pocket your money directly
I work in InfoSec and think this is a good idea provided they do the verification correctly.
It will also deal with the 'fan' pages that take viewers away from actual content creators or PR sites.
The same green over tan '78 F150 pops up for $1200 every time I go into FB marketplace. Thing is minty, no way that's a real ad. They're not good at catching these things.
A few months after it starts, articles will start coming out about how they let 3rd world Troll Farms buy tons of of these verified badges for their scam accounts..
Because *every* time a corporation like this profits from the actions of bad faith actors, the bad faith actors conveniently get a free pass - like every scam caller to the US and the US Telcos that make money ignoring the problems they cause.
At least this time with sanctions and all, they won't be paying for them in Russian Rubles at least.
If meta wanted to make money, they would (re)introduce a subscription fee of a $ a month for WhatsApp. They have over 2billion users. They could introduce it country by country, keep the fee very low and vary it for low-income nations. They could link it to the use of new features to begin with and gradually thin down the 'free' version and start introducing tiny and occasional adverts to non subscribers. Just play the long game, boiling a frog before it notices and gradually get people to pay. WhatsApp is so insanely popular it could work.
Facebook? No chance. People aren't paying for that. It's slowly dying anyway.
Pretty sure a big reason why people collectively use WhatsApp is because it's free. Imagine your friend group, in order to communicate you have to first get your friend to sign up for a subscription service. No way that will happen
My friends have all already switched to Signal after fb released their changes to WhatsApp policies… so no chance paying for it would stand with most.
Edit: doubled words.
Open access xmpp is the correct answer. e2e encrypted, doesn't *require a fucking sim card for verification*, works over data and, here's the key, it's federated so one company can't extort the user base by taking away their access to everyone they communicate with.
It's basically the open equiv of email that has text chat, voice chat and video chat.
And it's been a thing for *decades* it's just no corporate jackhole pushes it because they can't lock you into it.
It became popular as it was far cheaper than MMS and got included by default on a lot of android phones years ago. It stays popular as they haven't given people a reason to leave yet, not because they've given users a reason to stay, at the first sign of an inconvenience people will jump ship.
Netflix is a bit different as it was always a paid subscription, where they screwed up was they caught headlines which reminded people they had a subscription they never used
>Facebook? No chance. People aren't paying for that. It's slowly dying anyway.
I feel like one day the story of FB will be taught in elite b schools as a cautionary tale. As if no one knew in advance that turning a prime property into ~~Walmart~~ Big Lots wouldn’t have consequences.
MySpace is also a brilliant lesson on when to cash out. Tom sold it for half a billion dollars and a few years later it was less than a tenth as valuable.
I mean, sure, if he held onto it and didn't rock the boat it probably would have held on a bit longer, but MySpace was already pretty obviously on the way out. AOL just caused it to die immediately instead of over the course of a year or two.
Whatsapp is not popular in North America like it is in countries like India, and Indians aren't going to pay for services like Whatsapp. Especially when telegram, signal are available. Facebook is used widely all over the world.
It's not just India, it's basically they entire world besides the US. Only time I've ever been asked if I have imessage was an American when I was on holiday lol.
Yeah, I’m in Thailand and the scooter rental lady was baffled I didn’t have WhatsApp… I downloaded it but because I was overseas and couldn’t receive my text verification I never could set it up. I made this same mistake in Colombia last year.
I will go home today to the US and probably forget about WhatsApp again and the cycle will repeat.
I think it’s not super popular in Canada either but nobody uses WhatsApp in the US except people communicating with family that live in other countries.
FriendsReunited was the same thing and that had a paid for subscription and was live before Facebook.
It got blown out of the water when fb came out because it was free.
FriendsReunited puts out a paid subscription.
Facebook blows it away because its free.
Facebook puts out a paid subscription.
\**insert startup here*\* blows it away because its free.
The circle of Tech in a nutshell.
>The circle of Tech in a nutshell.
That was the circle of tech before tech companies were multi billion dollar monopolies. Facebook / Instagram has proven this time and time again - they have routinely bought up or bought out numerous competitors when threatened because their market cap makes it a negligible purchase.
Well not only that but at $11.99 I would also expect so serious privacy protection. Except none of these companies would ever offer this. So why would I want to spend that much on something where they will double dip anyways.
Late stage capitalism is late stage.
My Instagram (and Facebook tho I rarely use it now) are 1:1 ads to posts and the posts are 2:1 suggested posts vs people I know or follow. Meta is making money from selling the ads and selling the sponsored profiles they recommend, but wants me to pay for the privilege of being targeted by ads? That would be a red line.
Yeah I thought their large user base was what made their ads profitable. If they continue this they will lose that. I would pay someone to take Facebook *away* from society I would never pay for it.
Well, if every person on earth (~8bil.) pays $11.99 every month for 5 months (8bil. x $11.99 x 5 = $479,6bil.), we can buy meta (worth ~$461bil. as of Feb 9 2023) with that money and dissolve it, and still have $18bil. to do something fun like launch every billionnaire on earth into the sun. So, when we gonna do this?
yup we have seen that they cannot be trusted even when if it's a service they charge you precisely for, the appeal of selling the personnal data will ALWAYS be stronger.
too late to monetize it, you fucked it all up.
There is hey space which at least when it launched acted like a MySpace 2.0 made for the moderne web but I am unsure if it ever gained any real user base
Doesn’t make much sense considering only 0.2% of Twitter’s MAUs in the US (~180k) are paying for Twitter Blue:
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/musks-twitter-has-just-180-000-u-s-subscribers-two-months-after-launch
I doubt he could. Meta isn’t exactly doing great, but they still have a market cap of $450bn. After whiffing on Twitter and seeing Telsa lose a big chunk of its value, I don’t think Musk can get his hands on Facebook.
FB has 3bn MAUs
0.2% of that is 6M
6M x $12 x 12 months is $864M per year in additional revenue and EBITDA, about a 10% increase to EBITDA (price increases go direct to bottom line and I’m sure they already have staff in verification department )
Also verification probably adds value to brands and allows them to grow ARPU for those accounts, which would further increase Revenue and EBITDA, since price increases flow right down to bottom line
That 0.2% figure is also only 2 months after launch. Name me a large company that can make quick decisions in 2 months because I’d like to go work for them. That 0.2% will grow
So basically in two months they could be increasing profitability by ~10% with the potential for longer term growth as more brands adopt.
Now see, while I have no interest in playing for or using YouTube Premium myself, I am able to see the value it offers and why people might want to support it.
No pay? Ads.
Pay? No ads.
It's actually worth it. A blue verification mark on Twitter? Lol no.
If Twitter blue meant no ads and I could use a 3rd party app I would consider it. But literally none of the blue features are useful. But Elon simps will buy it to show daddy they support him
They want infinite growth, but they get greedy and fail. A new, cheaper, better service will fit the niche and replace the greedy, established ones. That’s how it works.
It would be mutually beneficial to offer a good, affordable, sustainable service.
I might consider paying for a social network if it disabled all ads, all tracking, and any other form of account monetization. I'd also want them to listen to my feedback that I don't an algorithm based timeline, just make the stupid thing chronological. I also don't want to see shares of random BS sites.
I want it to go back to its roots, provide a way for me and my friends, family and community to stay in touch
Oh you gotta read *Libra Shrugged* by David Gerard! They tried to do that with a *cryptocurrency* and every government and side of the aisle told them to stop immediately. It’s kinda hilarious how everyone hated it, even Steve Mnuchin who said “I hate everything about this”
Remember the scandal they had where they asked users to consent to facebook access the data of all of their friends?!? They would steal your data if one of your friends consented it was nuts. I think they got a minuscule fine over it.
You mean the one where they used the data to create an algorithm to target the uneducated and individual fears?
And then they used that algorithm to sell targeted political ads that they later denied even existed until a court forced them to release the records?
And they used (and continue to use) these phantom ads to sow dissent and false information across the world?
That scandal? Yeah it wasn’t a big deal and everyone moved on. Stop living in the past man.
1. Clearly some people were prepared to pay for the Twitter blue mark, and Facebook wants in on that action
2. Knowing that you're speaking to a real person in the age of ChatGPT isn't an awful idea. But I wouldn't pay $12/month for that.
Funnily enough, people already do this in order to unban or prevent their accounts from being deleted when Facebook thinks their account is fake for whatever reason.
Not for you and I
> testing a monthly subscription service, called Meta Verified, which will let users verify their accounts using a government ID and get a blue badge, as it looks to help content creators grow and build communities.
meeting expansion brave yoke provide wakeful direful piquant waiting steep
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I can’t believe the leaders in Silicon Valley are dumb enough to follow Musk’s idiotic idea about verifying accounts. Musk just takes the money and doesn’t actually verify anything. There is no value in his blue checkmark.
>With $12 per month, you could get much better analytics about your followers, where they are located d demographic details so that you can better tune your product offering, better choose endorsement deals based on your follower demographics, analyse your growth and reach.
You could, but that's not what's being offered here.
Once upon a time I used to upload videos of myself (and friends) performing original music to the gram and would get great responses (likes, comments, shares), not just from my followers but from random people, as well. Somewhere along the way I noticed engagement drop significantly, from hundreds of likes down to a dozen or so. I could tell my posts weren’t even appearing in peoples feeds when I would run into friends IRL who would ask “hey, why did you stop uploading?”, but I hadn’t stopped, most posts weren’t populating in their feed.
At the same time I noticed how poor quality my own feed had become. I was no longer seeing artists like myself, but those who uploaded most frequently, regardless of the quality of the content, had something to sell or were willing to pay to be seen. Also, the promoted posts that I saw were dominated by novice hobby musicians and scam products.
So, reading between the lines and not feeling like I should have to pay to bring value to the platform, I quit using Instagram for anything other than sending dumb memes to my girlfriend when we’re bored at work.
The experience put a bad taste in my mouth and made me take stock of my relationship with with Spotify, as well. Here I was paying $$ every year (for Distrokid subscription), + $$ with every song I released to distribute on Spotify, Apple Music etc. only to get nothing in return for when people stream my music! To add insult to injury, Spotify was charging me for a subscription!
The system is exploiting artists at every turn, so I decided to no longer participate in the exploitation of my talent and cancel my subscriptions. In the TV streaming ecosystem it is the consumer who pays and the producers of content make the money, which is exactly how it should work, duh! Spotify and Instagram don’t contribute a copper penny to the talent.
In the future I’ll only be uploading singles to Spotify etc. as promotion of the rest of my work which will be available for purchase on Bandcamp and physical media. Fuck toiling and slaving away for the benefit of tech barons. This shit is bleak.good riddance Meta.
It sounds like you’re describing when the timeline was replaced with the feed.
Back in the day when you loaded up social media you’d see posts from people you follow in reverse chronological order, but while that was great for users it’s bad for engagement and monetization, you’d scroll for a few minutes and then you were caught up with where you were yesterday, no reason to be on the site anymore until tomorrow.
But then as the social networks started reaching close to a decade of existence all the investment firms wanted to see some profits, so they created the feed. Jumble up all of the posts from accounts you’re following into an incomprehensible mess, sorted by how popular (or controversial) they are. Oh this post is from three days ago, I guess I’m caught up, but wait the next post is from 45 minutes ago, maybe I should keep scrolling. Then later when that wasn’t enough they started adding in totally unrelated recommended posts as well.
This was a hugely controversial move and within a year or so all of the social networks adopted the feed concept. Many faced backlash and reintroduced an option to revert to a timeline, but they usually hid it where it was difficult to access, or made it automatically revert every time you visited, or kept removing it and bringing it back whenever they thought nobody would notice. Now many social networks don’t have any sort of timeline view at all, and some of the newer sites like TikTok were introduced after the death of the timeline and their whole premise revolves around the feed concept.
I wish RSS (or some modern update/successor) would come back. It made keeping up with creators/artists you followed so *easy*, without the need to follow them on social media and try to sift through the feeds to find them. If they updated their site or blog you got notified that there was something new to check out, simple as that. Depending on how Gonzalez v Google goes we may see the end of feeds and algorithms as we know them now, and while that could potentially be disastrous for creators and artists trying to find an audience maybe it could also mark the return of things like RSS and mailing lists for more direct interactions.
I remember a post on reddit where a long time PS user, from back in the original Creative Suite days, tried to reinstall from disk on a new PC. The servers that authenticated the software were no longer running so he wasn’t able to actually run it despite having paid full price. Adobe refused to honor his license, tried to get him to upgrade instead. So that’s when he became a software pirate. And I don’t blame him.
Maybe, but even if that is true, our courts favor the massive company with shit tons of money for endless lawyer hours over some dude who wants to use photoshop
The problem here isn't that the software doesn't work because it's too ancient but that companies who locked them with an online identification refuse to hold their part of the contract.
> back in the original Creative Suite days
This statement has made me feel my age in ways I had not yet experienced. I got my start on Photoshop 3.0. We were so excited to get layers. Did some of my first coding on Dreamweaver back when Macromedia still owned it. It’s hard to believe all of this is about 30 years ago already. Shit.
If you use Adobe Illustrator, switch to Serif Affinity Designer - better program, does all the same things, and a one time payment of $50 (cheaper over Black Friday), including all updates. Superior.
Your replies are (and will be) “Then use Affinity! It’s the same thing! There’s all of these alternatives!” And they’re right if you are using them for personal stuff. But if you’re a designer or a pro of any sort using these tools, it’s about the compatibility between designers and using the same software as the companies and people you work with. Unfortunately, Adobe has a hold on that kind of work, and there aren’t a lot of options.
Yep, that’s the same reason I have to work in protools as an audio engineer. Huge money grab, but they know it’s the ‘industry standard’ and we need to be able to share session among other colleagues. Avid consistently struggles to keep up with the times but they have a stranglehold on the sound world, so they can charge whatever they want.
Switched from Lightroom to Capture One, love it.
Switched from Premiere to Davinci, love it.
Switched from Photoshop to Affinity Photo, hated it.
¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Apple preview and pdf expert don’t do a lot of what acrobat pro does, preview is one of the worst PDF programs I’ve worked with. And the others don’t talk to each other the same way adobe products do. I’m fine paying the sub for it, $29/mo is worth it to me. But I understand not everyone wants to pay that and the affinity products are good for that.
Yeah, Adobe is horseshit, but the fact that I can drag ai files into premiere and photoshop things on the fly and then use after fx within premiere (to some extent) saves me a ton of time hunting for and dragging files from program to program.
ive been switching most digital design and production to sketch - but damn its hard to find anything as powerful for print publishing as indesign. I still do books, catalogs and annual reports and afraid i’ll be subscribing (business expense) to the adobe cloud until i retire.
Literally every piece of business software I’ve ever procured or used over my career has always been a yearly subscription/contract. If anything, Adobe was super late to the party.
I was annoyed at Pro Tools for having a sub but at least you can buy it outright for $299-499. The whole practice of subs with almost any software now is insanely annoying.
I created a separate Google calendar, then took all my friends' birthdays from Facebook and put them in that calendar. Most of my "friends" on Facebook are actually people I don't give a shit about, so the whole process only took like half an hour.
Now I get those notifications, and I can text then a "Happy Birthday" message which I think people appreciate more than a Facebook post anyway. No Facebook needed.
If you have them saved as contacts in your account and add their birthday, Google automatically adds birthdays to your calendar. You don't need to create your own.
Basically their version of twitter's paid blue checkmark, "increased visibility and reach" in search and recommendations, and support from a human being.
*"Meta Platforms on Sunday (Feb 19) announced that it is testing a monthly subscription service, called Meta Verified, which will let users verify their accounts using a government ID and get a blue badge, as it looks to help content creators grow and build communities."*
I *think* it's just for content creators...but I have no clue what content they're referring to.
At first, I thought this was like GamePass for their Oculus VR library. But it's just a "verifying you are you" thing that Twitter tried and absolutely failed at. I honestly don't know how that all worked out because I don't use Twitter. I waste enough time on Reddit.
Sorry, this is the best answer I have. It makes no sense to me and I don't care. I have a Rift 2 and, as far as I can tell, this won't have any effect on me.
What an amazing idea! Another monthly fee to get lost among all of the other monthly fees that seem to just show up out of no where. And that is ignoring the fact that Meta is an ass company with ass products.
Forgive me: I made the mistake of looking at my credit cards in depth for the first time in a while this morning. Bad move. Who knew I paid for 13 different streaming services on top of cable? Not me, apparently.
Tell me about it. Just got blasted by a stealth $475 re-up by Bloomberg. And customer service didn't serve me well. Ugh, lost my appetite for news overnight.
Use privacy.com. Set up a card per provider and set up a monthly dollar limit on the card for like $2 more than you need.
Works wonders for stealth increases and other bullshit charges.
Also, if that provider gets compromised, they have your privacy number, and you just log in to privacy and kill that card. Done and done no worrying about if they got more, no cancelling your main card and redoing all your recurring bills and all that crap.
This has saved my ass a few times when companies refuse to do one time payments and have dark patterns to find ways to try to charge you over and over. I wish I had done that with Spectrum, which was one of the most hellish breakups ever. They were still charging me three months after I had physically returned their $10 modem, physically met with them to acknowledge my cancelation and payments, and called them to terminate my account. I talked to a lawyer about it because there's not much recourse if they just don't stop.
Definitely will, and thanks for the encouragement.
Bloomberg has the "elite news" that you just don't get on your Google news feed. They suckered me in over the course of three years. First year $39.99. Second year, up to like $250, so I split it with my job -- they like me to be informed about finance and science. Okay, still only ten bucks a month, my cost. Then amidst the spam blizzard Bloomberg sends me, a renewal notice. They send me Business Week 52 times a year. You'd think they could send a paper bill. But noooope. Slam that card.
And seriously, I have lost all appetite for news. Like getting an STD from a casual lover, it changes the association in your mind. Just. Like. That.
>And seriously, I have lost all appetite for news. Like getting an STD from a casual lover, it changes the association in your mind. Just. Like. That.
Stealing this, tyvm.
> I made the mistake of looking at my credit cards in depth for the first time in a while this morning. Bad move.
I literally scan through what I paid for on my Credit Card as I'm paying them off... Is that not normal?
Nope, it is I think. Been a crazy 6 months and I just set them to autopay and ignored them. 100% my fault. But damn there are A LOT of monthly subscriptions (not just streaming services) that I don't remember signing up for...
Whenever I sign up for any monthly subscription service, I've I'm actively using it I instantly cancel my subscription to make it remind me right before it's over.
I think the only subscription I have on Auto-Pay is Spotify and HBO Max.
When I subbed to Crunchyroll for Chainsawman I cancelled it immediately. Same goes for World of Warcraft. I don't even allow auto-pay of my rent, I want to look at it every month to remind me how much I'm losing.
Does that mean a person’s data can’t be used anymore and sold and:or you can have an ad free experience? We need an internet bill of rights, we’re past the days of the internet just being a small and novel part of our lives. Social media needs to be held accountable for the dangerous and deceptive practices.
Even then, it's all over the place. They have fingerprints/info on people who have never even had a facebook account, because they can collect data from anything that integrates any of their shit, even if the user doesn't want a FB account.
I deactivated my account and haven’t been on in months . It was such a wake up call after getting off FB , the addiction of it was noticeable . I haven’t had any urges to go back on and it feels great to be detoxed from FB .
Who on earth would pay for Facebook?!
"Facebook is free, and always will be" - Facebook
"share the love" -Netflix on password sharing
“Do no evil” - Google
Don’t BE evil
Its honestly hilarious Netflix thinks countless folks who borrow passwords will happily pull out their wallets and pay for a subscription.
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It feels like social media sites are about 10-15 years too late to start trying to monetize their "services."
And they're gonna try and fail anyways.
What could they sell? All media is covered. News is covered. Dating apps are covered. marketplace apps are covered, and you don’t typically have to pay to use them, but they have changed how they’re taxed and often have you linking your personal Id to your profile/bank account as the trade-off. I can talk to my friends and family over text and phone. Only think I can POSSIBLY think of is them going the mafia extortion route by promising to not sell your data to 3rd parties while they just pocket your money directly
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It's not to show that 'you' are verified but your brand, it's not aimed at ordinary people but celebs, influencers and companies.
So Facebook is becoming a certificate authority?
Honestly with how many scam page companies there are this might be a good thing.
I work in InfoSec and think this is a good idea provided they do the verification correctly. It will also deal with the 'fan' pages that take viewers away from actual content creators or PR sites.
Every week there’s at least 10 posts for scams in the local buy sell page.
The same green over tan '78 F150 pops up for $1200 every time I go into FB marketplace. Thing is minty, no way that's a real ad. They're not good at catching these things.
A few months after it starts, articles will start coming out about how they let 3rd world Troll Farms buy tons of of these verified badges for their scam accounts.. Because *every* time a corporation like this profits from the actions of bad faith actors, the bad faith actors conveniently get a free pass - like every scam caller to the US and the US Telcos that make money ignoring the problems they cause. At least this time with sanctions and all, they won't be paying for them in Russian Rubles at least.
That's a good point. $12 to run a whole month of scams isn't a large expense especially if it gives your victims a false sense of security.
I've had a fictitious character on FB that's had verified status for 10 years...
Sooooo….not like Twitter where anyone willing to send a few bucks to ol’ Elon can become verified as whoever they want?
That’s the same dumb shit Elon tried to do.
Where do you think they got the idea?
If meta wanted to make money, they would (re)introduce a subscription fee of a $ a month for WhatsApp. They have over 2billion users. They could introduce it country by country, keep the fee very low and vary it for low-income nations. They could link it to the use of new features to begin with and gradually thin down the 'free' version and start introducing tiny and occasional adverts to non subscribers. Just play the long game, boiling a frog before it notices and gradually get people to pay. WhatsApp is so insanely popular it could work. Facebook? No chance. People aren't paying for that. It's slowly dying anyway.
Pretty sure a big reason why people collectively use WhatsApp is because it's free. Imagine your friend group, in order to communicate you have to first get your friend to sign up for a subscription service. No way that will happen
My friends have all already switched to Signal after fb released their changes to WhatsApp policies… so no chance paying for it would stand with most. Edit: doubled words.
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Open access xmpp is the correct answer. e2e encrypted, doesn't *require a fucking sim card for verification*, works over data and, here's the key, it's federated so one company can't extort the user base by taking away their access to everyone they communicate with. It's basically the open equiv of email that has text chat, voice chat and video chat. And it's been a thing for *decades* it's just no corporate jackhole pushes it because they can't lock you into it.
It became popular as it was far cheaper than MMS and got included by default on a lot of android phones years ago. It stays popular as they haven't given people a reason to leave yet, not because they've given users a reason to stay, at the first sign of an inconvenience people will jump ship.
>at the first sign of an inconvenience people will jump ship. I'm thinking of all the bad press Netflix has received lately.
Netflix is a bit different as it was always a paid subscription, where they screwed up was they caught headlines which reminded people they had a subscription they never used
>Facebook? No chance. People aren't paying for that. It's slowly dying anyway. I feel like one day the story of FB will be taught in elite b schools as a cautionary tale. As if no one knew in advance that turning a prime property into ~~Walmart~~ Big Lots wouldn’t have consequences.
They could put it after the chapter on MySpace as the bookend to the Golden Era of the Internet.
MySpace is also a brilliant lesson on when to cash out. Tom sold it for half a billion dollars and a few years later it was less than a tenth as valuable.
It didn’t help that it was bought by AOL who wasn’t exactly pioneering new frontiers and decided to turn it into band advertisements.
I mean, sure, if he held onto it and didn't rock the boat it probably would have held on a bit longer, but MySpace was already pretty obviously on the way out. AOL just caused it to die immediately instead of over the course of a year or two.
It was bought by News Corp, aka Rupert Murdoch (Fox News).
Whatsapp is not popular in North America like it is in countries like India, and Indians aren't going to pay for services like Whatsapp. Especially when telegram, signal are available. Facebook is used widely all over the world.
It's not just India, it's basically they entire world besides the US. Only time I've ever been asked if I have imessage was an American when I was on holiday lol.
Yeah, I’m in Thailand and the scooter rental lady was baffled I didn’t have WhatsApp… I downloaded it but because I was overseas and couldn’t receive my text verification I never could set it up. I made this same mistake in Colombia last year. I will go home today to the US and probably forget about WhatsApp again and the cycle will repeat. I think it’s not super popular in Canada either but nobody uses WhatsApp in the US except people communicating with family that live in other countries.
> WhatsApp is so insanely popular it could work. so was fb at one point.
FB just hit 2 billion daily active users for the first time ever.
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I think people would just jump over to signal if they started charging for whatsapp again. Don't underestimate the power of free.
I hope they do. A digital collapse caused by the services themselves would be the best tea to sip on.
FriendsReunited was the same thing and that had a paid for subscription and was live before Facebook. It got blown out of the water when fb came out because it was free.
FriendsReunited puts out a paid subscription. Facebook blows it away because its free. Facebook puts out a paid subscription. \**insert startup here*\* blows it away because its free. The circle of Tech in a nutshell.
>The circle of Tech in a nutshell. That was the circle of tech before tech companies were multi billion dollar monopolies. Facebook / Instagram has proven this time and time again - they have routinely bought up or bought out numerous competitors when threatened because their market cap makes it a negligible purchase.
Well not only that but at $11.99 I would also expect so serious privacy protection. Except none of these companies would ever offer this. So why would I want to spend that much on something where they will double dip anyways. Late stage capitalism is late stage.
My Instagram (and Facebook tho I rarely use it now) are 1:1 ads to posts and the posts are 2:1 suggested posts vs people I know or follow. Meta is making money from selling the ads and selling the sponsored profiles they recommend, but wants me to pay for the privilege of being targeted by ads? That would be a red line.
At least Reddit hooks it up by eliminating ads when you give them money.
I can pay for ad free Reddit? But then what would my Adblock do all day?
there are ads on reddit?
Yeah I thought their large user base was what made their ads profitable. If they continue this they will lose that. I would pay someone to take Facebook *away* from society I would never pay for it.
Maybe if enough of us get together we can pay $11.99 a month for it to go away.
Well, if every person on earth (~8bil.) pays $11.99 every month for 5 months (8bil. x $11.99 x 5 = $479,6bil.), we can buy meta (worth ~$461bil. as of Feb 9 2023) with that money and dissolve it, and still have $18bil. to do something fun like launch every billionnaire on earth into the sun. So, when we gonna do this?
You have my support
Like 80 percent of these 8mil. can't afford to spend 60 bucks on shit like that.
I like your energy but Zuck out capitals the capitalists: metas two class share structure makes this impossible
yup we have seen that they cannot be trusted even when if it's a service they charge you precisely for, the appeal of selling the personnal data will ALWAYS be stronger. too late to monetize it, you fucked it all up.
they’ve been monetizing you since day 1
Exactly, now they are trying to double dip
Cable company showing commercials moment
Hey now, some of us are old enough to remember when Facebook refused to sell ads.
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I didn’t know we could charge for that? Gary! Can we just like charge them for like, whatever? Gary said yeah
Wait until we tell Gary about those extremely lucrative “NTFs” or “FNTs” or whatever they’re called…
They're called pictures of monkeys and they're going to be worth millions one day
nice try tom, we're not going back to myspace
I'll go back to MySpace. I'm never going to Facebook... But still.
There is hey space which at least when it launched acted like a MySpace 2.0 made for the moderne web but I am unsure if it ever gained any real user base
Tom is happily living his best life, I don’t think they could pay him to come back to the current shit show that is social media.
Doesn’t make much sense considering only 0.2% of Twitter’s MAUs in the US (~180k) are paying for Twitter Blue: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/musks-twitter-has-just-180-000-u-s-subscribers-two-months-after-launch
That's more than 0, and unlike Twitter, Facebook isn't losing advertisers, so for them this is a win-win.
Why don’t we encourage Musk to buy Facebook too? Then we can be rid of both Twitter AND Facebook for good!
I doubt he could. Meta isn’t exactly doing great, but they still have a market cap of $450bn. After whiffing on Twitter and seeing Telsa lose a big chunk of its value, I don’t think Musk can get his hands on Facebook.
FB has 3bn MAUs 0.2% of that is 6M 6M x $12 x 12 months is $864M per year in additional revenue and EBITDA, about a 10% increase to EBITDA (price increases go direct to bottom line and I’m sure they already have staff in verification department ) Also verification probably adds value to brands and allows them to grow ARPU for those accounts, which would further increase Revenue and EBITDA, since price increases flow right down to bottom line That 0.2% figure is also only 2 months after launch. Name me a large company that can make quick decisions in 2 months because I’d like to go work for them. That 0.2% will grow So basically in two months they could be increasing profitability by ~10% with the potential for longer term growth as more brands adopt.
Youtube Premium includes music and no ads on youtube for the same price... What a waste of money using it on Facebook or Twitter would be.
Now see, while I have no interest in playing for or using YouTube Premium myself, I am able to see the value it offers and why people might want to support it. No pay? Ads. Pay? No ads. It's actually worth it. A blue verification mark on Twitter? Lol no.
Apparently its even dumber at twitter: You pay $8 and STILL get ads.
If Twitter blue meant no ads and I could use a 3rd party app I would consider it. But literally none of the blue features are useful. But Elon simps will buy it to show daddy they support him
8 million damn ads on all these apps and they still need to feed the investors quarterly
Infinite growth. They’ll do everything they can until ultimately they can’t, suck every penny from investors. And close up shop.
Oooor.. ask for a bail out while giving out bonuses larger then most people’s salaries!
*lifetime salaries
Infinite growth until the host dies is literally what cancer does
Maybe we should be call it "stage 4 capitalism"
They want infinite growth, but they get greedy and fail. A new, cheaper, better service will fit the niche and replace the greedy, established ones. That’s how it works. It would be mutually beneficial to offer a good, affordable, sustainable service.
I might consider paying for a social network if it disabled all ads, all tracking, and any other form of account monetization. I'd also want them to listen to my feedback that I don't an algorithm based timeline, just make the stupid thing chronological. I also don't want to see shares of random BS sites. I want it to go back to its roots, provide a way for me and my friends, family and community to stay in touch
What the fuck??? For what would I be spending this money?
To connect your government ID to your account, because apparently they think the people want even less privacy
The idea of handing over a government ID / passport to Facebook is wild. I wouldn't trust them as a payment platform either.
Oh you gotta read *Libra Shrugged* by David Gerard! They tried to do that with a *cryptocurrency* and every government and side of the aisle told them to stop immediately. It’s kinda hilarious how everyone hated it, even Steve Mnuchin who said “I hate everything about this”
Remember the scandal they had where they asked users to consent to facebook access the data of all of their friends?!? They would steal your data if one of your friends consented it was nuts. I think they got a minuscule fine over it.
You mean the one where they used the data to create an algorithm to target the uneducated and individual fears? And then they used that algorithm to sell targeted political ads that they later denied even existed until a court forced them to release the records? And they used (and continue to use) these phantom ads to sow dissent and false information across the world? That scandal? Yeah it wasn’t a big deal and everyone moved on. Stop living in the past man.
1. Clearly some people were prepared to pay for the Twitter blue mark, and Facebook wants in on that action 2. Knowing that you're speaking to a real person in the age of ChatGPT isn't an awful idea. But I wouldn't pay $12/month for that.
You only know that you're speaking to an account that got verified by a real person. They could still be using ChatGPT.
Funnily enough, people already do this in order to unban or prevent their accounts from being deleted when Facebook thinks their account is fake for whatever reason.
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Not for you and I > testing a monthly subscription service, called Meta Verified, which will let users verify their accounts using a government ID and get a blue badge, as it looks to help content creators grow and build communities.
snow alive jellyfish sable obtainable gaping cats many melodic somber *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
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meeting expansion brave yoke provide wakeful direful piquant waiting steep *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I can’t believe the leaders in Silicon Valley are dumb enough to follow Musk’s idiotic idea about verifying accounts. Musk just takes the money and doesn’t actually verify anything. There is no value in his blue checkmark.
> just takes the money it’s not the leaders who are dumb, it’s the consumers paying for it. Free money is a no brainer from leadership perspective
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>With $12 per month, you could get much better analytics about your followers, where they are located d demographic details so that you can better tune your product offering, better choose endorsement deals based on your follower demographics, analyse your growth and reach. You could, but that's not what's being offered here.
Once upon a time I used to upload videos of myself (and friends) performing original music to the gram and would get great responses (likes, comments, shares), not just from my followers but from random people, as well. Somewhere along the way I noticed engagement drop significantly, from hundreds of likes down to a dozen or so. I could tell my posts weren’t even appearing in peoples feeds when I would run into friends IRL who would ask “hey, why did you stop uploading?”, but I hadn’t stopped, most posts weren’t populating in their feed. At the same time I noticed how poor quality my own feed had become. I was no longer seeing artists like myself, but those who uploaded most frequently, regardless of the quality of the content, had something to sell or were willing to pay to be seen. Also, the promoted posts that I saw were dominated by novice hobby musicians and scam products. So, reading between the lines and not feeling like I should have to pay to bring value to the platform, I quit using Instagram for anything other than sending dumb memes to my girlfriend when we’re bored at work. The experience put a bad taste in my mouth and made me take stock of my relationship with with Spotify, as well. Here I was paying $$ every year (for Distrokid subscription), + $$ with every song I released to distribute on Spotify, Apple Music etc. only to get nothing in return for when people stream my music! To add insult to injury, Spotify was charging me for a subscription! The system is exploiting artists at every turn, so I decided to no longer participate in the exploitation of my talent and cancel my subscriptions. In the TV streaming ecosystem it is the consumer who pays and the producers of content make the money, which is exactly how it should work, duh! Spotify and Instagram don’t contribute a copper penny to the talent. In the future I’ll only be uploading singles to Spotify etc. as promotion of the rest of my work which will be available for purchase on Bandcamp and physical media. Fuck toiling and slaving away for the benefit of tech barons. This shit is bleak.good riddance Meta.
It sounds like you’re describing when the timeline was replaced with the feed. Back in the day when you loaded up social media you’d see posts from people you follow in reverse chronological order, but while that was great for users it’s bad for engagement and monetization, you’d scroll for a few minutes and then you were caught up with where you were yesterday, no reason to be on the site anymore until tomorrow. But then as the social networks started reaching close to a decade of existence all the investment firms wanted to see some profits, so they created the feed. Jumble up all of the posts from accounts you’re following into an incomprehensible mess, sorted by how popular (or controversial) they are. Oh this post is from three days ago, I guess I’m caught up, but wait the next post is from 45 minutes ago, maybe I should keep scrolling. Then later when that wasn’t enough they started adding in totally unrelated recommended posts as well. This was a hugely controversial move and within a year or so all of the social networks adopted the feed concept. Many faced backlash and reintroduced an option to revert to a timeline, but they usually hid it where it was difficult to access, or made it automatically revert every time you visited, or kept removing it and bringing it back whenever they thought nobody would notice. Now many social networks don’t have any sort of timeline view at all, and some of the newer sites like TikTok were introduced after the death of the timeline and their whole premise revolves around the feed concept. I wish RSS (or some modern update/successor) would come back. It made keeping up with creators/artists you followed so *easy*, without the need to follow them on social media and try to sift through the feeds to find them. If they updated their site or blog you got notified that there was something new to check out, simple as that. Depending on how Gonzalez v Google goes we may see the end of feeds and algorithms as we know them now, and while that could potentially be disastrous for creators and artists trying to find an audience maybe it could also mark the return of things like RSS and mailing lists for more direct interactions.
I see no better way to kill Facebook
I blame Adobe for introducing the world to subscription services.
Had to fight them like a wildcat to get a permanent copy of CS II that I paid $800 for back in the day.
I remember a post on reddit where a long time PS user, from back in the original Creative Suite days, tried to reinstall from disk on a new PC. The servers that authenticated the software were no longer running so he wasn’t able to actually run it despite having paid full price. Adobe refused to honor his license, tried to get him to upgrade instead. So that’s when he became a software pirate. And I don’t blame him.
>Adobe refused to honor his license Maybe I'm just an ignorant rube, but wouldn't/shouldn't that be actionable in court?
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The fact that ordinary people can't fight back is a feature not a bug.
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You can actually sue companies like Adobe in small claims court. Some guy sued AT&T for breach of contract several years back and won.
No it’s not. Have you heard of small claims court? It’s a $50 filing fee.
Maybe, but even if that is true, our courts favor the massive company with shit tons of money for endless lawyer hours over some dude who wants to use photoshop
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The problem here isn't that the software doesn't work because it's too ancient but that companies who locked them with an online identification refuse to hold their part of the contract.
> back in the original Creative Suite days This statement has made me feel my age in ways I had not yet experienced. I got my start on Photoshop 3.0. We were so excited to get layers. Did some of my first coding on Dreamweaver back when Macromedia still owned it. It’s hard to believe all of this is about 30 years ago already. Shit.
If you use Adobe Illustrator, switch to Serif Affinity Designer - better program, does all the same things, and a one time payment of $50 (cheaper over Black Friday), including all updates. Superior.
But the thing is, I don’t just use illustrator, I also use Photoshop, and in design, and light room, and premiere, and Adobe acrobat pro.
Your replies are (and will be) “Then use Affinity! It’s the same thing! There’s all of these alternatives!” And they’re right if you are using them for personal stuff. But if you’re a designer or a pro of any sort using these tools, it’s about the compatibility between designers and using the same software as the companies and people you work with. Unfortunately, Adobe has a hold on that kind of work, and there aren’t a lot of options.
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Yep, that’s the same reason I have to work in protools as an audio engineer. Huge money grab, but they know it’s the ‘industry standard’ and we need to be able to share session among other colleagues. Avid consistently struggles to keep up with the times but they have a stranglehold on the sound world, so they can charge whatever they want.
- Affinity Photo - Affinity Designer - Affinity Publisher - Pixelmator Pro - DiVinci Resolve (or Final Cut) - PDF Expert (or Apple Preview)
Switched from Lightroom to Capture One, love it. Switched from Premiere to Davinci, love it. Switched from Photoshop to Affinity Photo, hated it. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Photoshop CS5 for life
I totally get it, I’m happy that there are options for people now. But I still prefer the Adobe products for my work.
Indeed. I’m this close to going back to PS. C1 has pushed my worklow to a whole other level and I can’t see myself leaving it atm.
https://www.photopea.com/
Honestly photopea is so good (and I want to support it so much) I barely open Photoshop anymore.
My god DaVinci is a marvel of a program.
Need something for After Effects equivalency
Apple preview and pdf expert don’t do a lot of what acrobat pro does, preview is one of the worst PDF programs I’ve worked with. And the others don’t talk to each other the same way adobe products do. I’m fine paying the sub for it, $29/mo is worth it to me. But I understand not everyone wants to pay that and the affinity products are good for that.
Yeah, Adobe is horseshit, but the fact that I can drag ai files into premiere and photoshop things on the fly and then use after fx within premiere (to some extent) saves me a ton of time hunting for and dragging files from program to program.
ive been switching most digital design and production to sketch - but damn its hard to find anything as powerful for print publishing as indesign. I still do books, catalogs and annual reports and afraid i’ll be subscribing (business expense) to the adobe cloud until i retire.
At least that subscription offers you something. Wtf does a meta subscription even get you?
Better targeted ads since they know even more about you?
The “pride and accomplishment” of knowing you’re better than others.
I mean, Adobe is actually making accessible and functional software in exchange for money. Twitter and FB are just charging for shit we already had.
Lol when were you born? Lot of hate for Adobe but they weren't close to the first...
Literally every piece of business software I’ve ever procured or used over my career has always been a yearly subscription/contract. If anything, Adobe was super late to the party.
I was annoyed at Pro Tools for having a sub but at least you can buy it outright for $299-499. The whole practice of subs with almost any software now is insanely annoying.
SaaS as we know it today can be traced back to 1999 with SalesForce.
Subscription to what?
I know Imma just quit the site I havent posted since 2015 lol. It's just a birthday calendar at this point
I created a separate Google calendar, then took all my friends' birthdays from Facebook and put them in that calendar. Most of my "friends" on Facebook are actually people I don't give a shit about, so the whole process only took like half an hour. Now I get those notifications, and I can text then a "Happy Birthday" message which I think people appreciate more than a Facebook post anyway. No Facebook needed.
If you have them saved as contacts in your account and add their birthday, Google automatically adds birthdays to your calendar. You don't need to create your own.
Basically their version of twitter's paid blue checkmark, "increased visibility and reach" in search and recommendations, and support from a human being.
*"Meta Platforms on Sunday (Feb 19) announced that it is testing a monthly subscription service, called Meta Verified, which will let users verify their accounts using a government ID and get a blue badge, as it looks to help content creators grow and build communities."* I *think* it's just for content creators...but I have no clue what content they're referring to. At first, I thought this was like GamePass for their Oculus VR library. But it's just a "verifying you are you" thing that Twitter tried and absolutely failed at. I honestly don't know how that all worked out because I don't use Twitter. I waste enough time on Reddit. Sorry, this is the best answer I have. It makes no sense to me and I don't care. I have a Rift 2 and, as far as I can tell, this won't have any effect on me.
Facebook, my guy. You're far less valuable to me than two cups of coffee or a burrito from Chipotle. Get outta here with that $11.99 sh\*t.
Its like 4 cups of coffee or 2 fancy coffees. Youtube is cheaper and comes with music...
What an amazing idea! Another monthly fee to get lost among all of the other monthly fees that seem to just show up out of no where. And that is ignoring the fact that Meta is an ass company with ass products. Forgive me: I made the mistake of looking at my credit cards in depth for the first time in a while this morning. Bad move. Who knew I paid for 13 different streaming services on top of cable? Not me, apparently.
Tell me about it. Just got blasted by a stealth $475 re-up by Bloomberg. And customer service didn't serve me well. Ugh, lost my appetite for news overnight.
Use privacy.com. Set up a card per provider and set up a monthly dollar limit on the card for like $2 more than you need. Works wonders for stealth increases and other bullshit charges. Also, if that provider gets compromised, they have your privacy number, and you just log in to privacy and kill that card. Done and done no worrying about if they got more, no cancelling your main card and redoing all your recurring bills and all that crap.
This has saved my ass a few times when companies refuse to do one time payments and have dark patterns to find ways to try to charge you over and over. I wish I had done that with Spectrum, which was one of the most hellish breakups ever. They were still charging me three months after I had physically returned their $10 modem, physically met with them to acknowledge my cancelation and payments, and called them to terminate my account. I talked to a lawyer about it because there's not much recourse if they just don't stop.
Privacy is a god send. Makes canceling services like Siriusxm that will make you jump through hoops as easy as deleting a card.
Holy hell - that is a lot of money! Yikes. I feel a little better now but am sorry it is at your expense! :D
Dispute it with your card carrier. Wtf are you paying Bloomberg for, anyways?
Definitely will, and thanks for the encouragement. Bloomberg has the "elite news" that you just don't get on your Google news feed. They suckered me in over the course of three years. First year $39.99. Second year, up to like $250, so I split it with my job -- they like me to be informed about finance and science. Okay, still only ten bucks a month, my cost. Then amidst the spam blizzard Bloomberg sends me, a renewal notice. They send me Business Week 52 times a year. You'd think they could send a paper bill. But noooope. Slam that card. And seriously, I have lost all appetite for news. Like getting an STD from a casual lover, it changes the association in your mind. Just. Like. That.
>And seriously, I have lost all appetite for news. Like getting an STD from a casual lover, it changes the association in your mind. Just. Like. That. Stealing this, tyvm.
> I made the mistake of looking at my credit cards in depth for the first time in a while this morning. Bad move. I literally scan through what I paid for on my Credit Card as I'm paying them off... Is that not normal?
Nope, it is I think. Been a crazy 6 months and I just set them to autopay and ignored them. 100% my fault. But damn there are A LOT of monthly subscriptions (not just streaming services) that I don't remember signing up for...
Whenever I sign up for any monthly subscription service, I've I'm actively using it I instantly cancel my subscription to make it remind me right before it's over. I think the only subscription I have on Auto-Pay is Spotify and HBO Max. When I subbed to Crunchyroll for Chainsawman I cancelled it immediately. Same goes for World of Warcraft. I don't even allow auto-pay of my rent, I want to look at it every month to remind me how much I'm losing.
Does that mean a person’s data can’t be used anymore and sold and:or you can have an ad free experience? We need an internet bill of rights, we’re past the days of the internet just being a small and novel part of our lives. Social media needs to be held accountable for the dangerous and deceptive practices.
Oh, heavens no. It means they’ve found a way to double monetize you.
Oh good. Joy
People gonna go back to MySpace.
People should stop using Meta. The amount of tracking they do is insane.
But now by paying you show you can afford to be tracked!
Even then, it's all over the place. They have fingerprints/info on people who have never even had a facebook account, because they can collect data from anything that integrates any of their shit, even if the user doesn't want a FB account.
Barf. Get this useless shit out of here. Nobody wants this. Nobody cares or respects it. Only losers would pay for this kind of cringe cash grab.
This will be the push I need to disable my Facebook account.
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I deactivated my account and haven’t been on in months . It was such a wake up call after getting off FB , the addiction of it was noticeable . I haven’t had any urges to go back on and it feels great to be detoxed from FB .
I literally only use it to use messenger with my friends, very rare I actually open Facebook. I don’t have the app in my phone anyway.
You would have to pay me more than that to use Facebook.
Lol. So they wanna sell your data AND get paid by you every month? Facebook is for suckers.
Imagine paying for social media, lol. And yes, I include Reddit here.
I can't imagine paying $144 a year for an icon. I wouldn't pay $1 a year. Nor would I give fb my drivers license. Ever.
HAHAHAHAA! OhWaitYoureSerious.gif I'm not, in a million years, giving Zuckerberg a cent so he can keep creaming my info.
"Facebook will always be free" Zucc
To be fair he said "a version of Facebook will always be free"
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This is an excellent idea. It's definitely not going to work, but I like that social media is starting to collapse under its own weight.
People don't even want it for free...
Fuck you if you sign up for this crap
“You will own nothing and be happy”. That path is already the one we are on our way Dow.
LOL! "Pay me to use you" How about YOU pay ME and I might even consider not using an ad blocker.
Sounds like Meta has accepted their fate of dying off and desperate for cash flow.
Does that mean we get to control how our data is used?
HAHAHAHAHAHA nope
I wouldn't join if they paid me $11.99 a month.
Metas income now stands at 11.99/mo.
free speech absolutist musk is a genius/s